


equal parts boy and bird

by facingthenorthwind (spacegandalf)



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Gen, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-31 16:32:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13979118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacegandalf/pseuds/facingthenorthwind
Summary: The Ellimist had given him a glimpse of the human body he had always wanted. And then he had taken it away.





	equal parts boy and bird

 When he flew over the treetops, theoretically to catch a meal, Tobias couldn’t stop thinking about the Ellimist. He was still angry about the Ellimist’s betrayal, but he wasn’t feeling anger as he flew. Instead, he was transfixed by what he had been in the mist. Half bird, half human — but it was the human he had always wanted, not the human he had been. A human with broader shoulders. No breasts. An adam’s apple. The Ellimist had given him a glimpse of the human body he had always wanted. And then he had taken it away. 

 

_AND ARE YOU HAPPY, TOBIAS?_

He flew until he was exhausted. He hadn’t caught anything to eat. If he were honest with himself, he had been too distracted trying to remember the feeling of that body. The feeling of taking a breath without ace bandages constricting his chest. The feeling of just feeling a little taller, a little broader, a little more _there_. The feeling of belonging in his skin. When he reached his tree, his wings ached and he felt like he would fall out of the sky like a rock if he flew any more. Perhaps the exhaustion would make him sleep. Perhaps he would be so exhausted he could have a night in peace, away from the nightmares and the dreams and the unplaceable unsettled feeling he woke up with.

But when he closed his eyes, he wasn’t in the forest. He was — he was in a room. A bedroom. The human Tobias looked at wasn’t the human the Ellimist had shown him in the mist. This was the Tobias from before. The Tobias who was too slight; the Tobias with small but noticeable breasts; the Tobias whose body was all _wrong_. 

The Ellimist played tricks. Tobias didn’t know why he was so disappointed. 

 

_AND ARE YOU HAPPY, TOBIAS?_

He morphed to human as the dawn light began to filter through the leaves. He had made sure to do it far away from anywhere people would come looking for him. He didn’t want anyone to see him like this. They didn’t know how to morph clothes, so what would he look like? In a morphing suit, there would be nowhere to hide.

Tobias hadn’t thought he could feel like his body was even less his than he had before he had become a nothlit. He had never felt like he belonged in the lump of flesh he had been assigned, but now — now his vision was terrible and he had gotten so used to feeling free that the experience of being back in a body that betrayed him with every moment hit him like a grizzly's backhand. He wanted to crawl right out of his skin and take to the skies — damn the Ellimist, damn his tricks, damn that fleeting taste of a body he _belonged_ in — but even as he was preparing to morph, feather patterns forming on his skin, an ache formed in the back of his throat and he realised that there was one thing this body had over the hawk.

This body could cry.

 

_AND ARE YOU HAPPY, TOBIAS?_


End file.
